Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, sharing and news aggregator of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks. Common features include:
The term social in regard to media suggests platforms enable communal activity. Social media enhances and extends human networks. Users access social media through Web application or custom apps on Mobile device. These interactive platforms allow individuals, communities, businesses, and organizations to share, co-create, discuss, participate in, and modify user-generated or self-curated content. Social media is used to document memories, learn, and form friendships. They may be used to promote people, companies, products, and ideas. Social media can be used to consume, publish, or share news.
Social media platforms can be categorized based on their primary function.
Popular social media platforms with over 100 million registered users include Twitter, Facebook, WeChat, ShareChat, Instagram, Pinterest, Qzone, Weibo, VK, Tumblr, Baidu Tieba, Threads and LinkedIn. Depending on interpretation, other popular platforms that are sometimes referred to as social media services include YouTube, Letterboxd, Tencent QQ, Quora, Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, LINE, Snapchat, Viber, Reddit, Discord, and TikTok. are examples of collaborative content creation.
Social media outlets differ from old media (e.g. , TV, and radio broadcasting) in many ways, including quality, reach, frequency, usability, relevancy, and permanence. Social media outlets operate in a dialogic transmission system (many sources to many receivers) while traditional media operate under a transmission model (one source to many receivers). For instance, a newspaper is delivered to many subscribers, and a radio station broadcasts the same programs to a city.
Social media has been criticized for a range of negative impacts on children and teenagers, including exposure to inappropriate content, exploitation by adults, sleep problems, attention problems, feelings of exclusion, and various mental health maladies. Social media has also received criticism as worsening political polarization and undermining democracy. Major news outlets often have strong controls in place to avoid and fix false claims, but social media's unique qualities bring viral content with little to no oversight. "Algorithms that track user engagement to prioritize what is shown tend to favor content that spurs negative emotions like anger and outrage. Overall, most online misinformation originates from a small minority of "superspreaders," but social media amplifies their reach and influence."
ARPANET, which came online in 1969, had by the late 1970s enabled exchange of non-government/business ideas and communication, as evidenced by the network etiquette (or "netiquette") described in a 1982 handbook on computing at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. ARPANET evolved into the Internet in the 1990s. Usenet, conceived by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, was the first open social media app, established in 1980.
A precursor of the electronic bulletin board system (BBS), known as Community Memory, appeared by 1973. Mainstream BBSs arrived with the Computer Bulletin Board System in Chicago, which launched on February 16, 1978. Before long, most major US cities had more than one BBS, running on TRS-80, Apple II, Atari 8-bit computers, IBM PC, Commodore 64, Sinclair, and others. CompuServe, Prodigy, and AOL were three of the largest BBS companies and were the first to migrate to the Internet in the 1990s. Between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, BBSes numbered in the tens of thousands in North America alone. Message forums were the signature BBS phenomenon throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.
In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee integrated HTML hypertext software with the Internet, creating the World Wide Web. This breakthrough led to an explosion of , Mailing list, and email services. Message forums migrated to the web, and evolved into , supported by cheaper access as well as the ability to handle far more people simultaneously.
These early text-based systems expanded to include images and video in the 21st century, aided by digital cameras and camera phones.
Social media started in the mid-1990s with the invention of platforms like GeoCities, Classmates.com, and SixDegrees.com. While instant messaging and chat clients existed at the time, SixDegrees was unique as it was the first online service designed for people to connect using their actual names instead of anonymously. It boasted features like profiles, friends lists, and school affiliations, making it "the very first social networking site". The platform's name was inspired by the "six degrees of separation" concept, which suggests that every person on the planet is just six connections away from everyone else.
In the early 2000s, social media platforms gained widespread popularity with BlackPlanet (1999) preceding Friendster and Myspace, followed by Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
Research from 2015 reported that globally, users spent 22% of their online time on social networks, likely fueled by the availability of smartphones. As of 2023, as many as 4.76 billion people used social media some 59% of the global population.
In 2019, Merriam-Webster defined social media as "forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)."
Some services offer more than one type of service.
According to Andreas Kaplan, mobile social media activities fall among four types:
Viral marketing campaigns are particularly attractive to because they can achieve widespread advertising coverage at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing campaigns. Nonprofit organizations and Activism may also attempt to spread content virally.
Social media sites provide specific functionality to help users re-share content, such as Twitter's and Facebook's "like" option.
and are programmed to mimic human interactions such as liking, commenting, and following.
''—either bot-assisted humans or human-assisted bots—are used for both legitimate and illegitimate purposes, from spreading fake news to creating marketing buzz. A common use claimed to be legitimate includes posting at a specific time. A human writes a post content and the bot posts it a specific time. In other cases, cyborgs spread fake news. Cyborgs may work as sock puppets, where one human pretends to be someone else, or operates multiple accounts, each pretending to be a person.
Examples are the social hub site Facebook launching an integrated video platform in May 2007, and Instagram, whose original scope was low-resolution photo sharing, introducing the ability to share quarter-minute 640×640 pixel videos (later extended to a minute with increased resolution). Instagram later implemented stories (short videos self-destructing after 24 hours), a concept popularized by Snapchat, as well as IGTV, for seekable videos. Stories were then adopted by YouTube.
Twitter, whose original scope was text-based microblogging, later adopted photo sharing, then video sharing, then a media studio for business users, after YouTube's Creator Studio.
The discussion platform Reddit added an integrated image hoster replacing the external image sharing platform Imgur, and then an internal video hosting service, followed by image galleries (multiple images in a single post), known from Imgur. Imgur implemented video sharing.
YouTube rolled out a Community feature, for sharing text-only posts and polls.
The following is a list of the most popular social networking services based on the number of active users per Statista.
+ Social networking services with the most users, January 2024 !# !Network !Number of users (millions) !Country of origin | |||
1 | 3,049 | United States | |
2 | YouTube | 2,491 | United States |
3 | 2,000 | United States | |
4 | 2,000 | United States | |
5 | TikTok | 1,526 | China |
6 | 1,336 | China | |
7 | Facebook Messenger | 979 | United States |
8 | Telegram | 800 | Russia |
9 | Douyin | 752 | China |
10 | Snapchat | 750 | United States |
11 | Kuaishou | 685 | China |
12 | 619 | United States |
Common Sense Media reported that children under age 13 in the United States use social networking services although many social media sites require users to be 13 or older. In 2017, the firm conducted a survey of parents of children from birth to age 8 and reported that 4% of children at this age used social media sites such as Instagram, Snapchat, or (now-defunct) Musical.ly "often" or "sometimes". Their 2019 survey surveyed Americans ages 8–16 and reported that about 31% of children ages 8–12 use social media. In that survey, teens aged 16–18 were asked when they started using social media. the median age was 14, although 28% said they started to use it before reaching 13.
+Apps used by U.S. tweens (ages 9–12), 2019-2020 !Platform !Overall !Boys !Girls !9-year-olds !12-year-olds | |||||
YouTube | 67% | 68% | 66% | 53.6% | 74.6% |
Minecraft | 48% | 61% | 35% | 43.6% | 49.9% |
Roblox | 47% | 44% | 49% | 41.2% | 41.7% |
Google Classroom | 45% | 48% | 41% | 39.6% | 49.3% |
Fortnite | 31% | 43% | 20% | 22.2% | 38.9% |
TikTok | 30% | 23% | 30% | 16.8% | 37% |
YouTube Kids | 26% | 24% | 28% | 32.7% | 22.1% |
Snapchat | 16% | 11% | 21% | 5.6% | 22.3% |
Messenger Kids | 15% | 12% | 18% | 19.1% | 10.4% |
15% | 12% | 19% | 3% | 28.8% | |
Discord | 8% | 11% | 5% | 0.7% | 14.4% |
8% | 6% | 9% | 2.2% | 15% | |
Twitch | 5% | 7% | 2% | 1.0% | 9.9% |
None of the above | 5% | 6% | 5% | 9.6% | 3.3% |
+Social media platforms used by U.S. kids in 2020 (ages 13–18) and 2017 (ages 10–18) !Platform !2020 !2017 | ||
YouTube | 86% | 70% |
69% | 60% | |
Snapchat | 68% | 59% |
TikTok | 47% | N/A |
43% | 63% | |
28% | 36% | |
14% | 6% | |
Another social networking service | 2% | 3% |
Do not use social networking service | 4% | 6% |
"Social media have become popularly use to seek for medical information and have fascinated the general public to collect information regarding corona virus pandemics in various perspectives. During these days, people are forced to stay at home and the social media have connected and supported awareness and pandemic updates."Healthcare workers and systems became more aware of social media as a place people were getting health information:
"During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media use has accelerated to the point of becoming a ubiquitous part of modern healthcare systems."This also led to the spread of disinformation. On December 11, 2020, the CDC put out a "Call to Action: Managing the Infodemic". Some healthcare organizations used hashtags as interventions and published articles on their Twitter data:
"Promotion of the joint usage of #PedsICU and #COVID19 throughout the international pediatric critical care community in tweets relevant to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and pediatric critical care."However others in the medical community were concerned about social media addiction, as it became an increasingly important context and therefore "source of social validation and reinforcement" and were unsure whether increased social media use was harmful.
In the United States, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement identifies and track individuals via social media, and has apprehended some people via social media-based sting operations. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (also known as CBP) and the United States Department of Homeland Security use social media data as influencing factors during the Travel visa process, and monitor individuals after they have entered the country. CBP officers have also been documented performing searches of electronics and social media behavior at the border, searching both citizens and non-citizens without first obtaining a warrant.
Business use of social media is complicated by the fact that the business does not fully control its social media presence. Instead, it makes its case by participating in the "conversation". Business uses social media on a customer-organizational level; and an intra-organizational level.
Social media can encourage entrepreneurship and innovation, by highlighting successes, and by easing access to resources that might not otherwise be readily available/known.
Primary uses are to create brand awareness, engage customers by conversation (e.g., customers provide feedback on the firm) and providing access to customer service.
Social media personalities, often referred to as "influencers", are Internet celebrities who are Sponsored post by marketers to promote products and companies online. Research reports that these endorsements attract the attention of users who have not settled on which products/services to buy, especially Digital native. The practice of harnessing influencers to market or promote a product or service to their following is commonly referred to as influencer marketing.
In 2013, the United Kingdom Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) began advising celebrities to make it clear whether they had been paid to recommend a product or service by using the hashtag #spon or #Advertising when endorsing. The US Federal Trade Commission issued similar guidelines.
Social media platforms also enable targeting specific audiences with advertising. Users of social media can share, and comment on the advertisement, turning passive consumers into active promoters and even producers. Targeting requires extra effort by advertisers to understand how to reach the right users. Companies can use humor (such as shitposting) to poke fun at competitors. Advertising can even inspire Fan art which can engage new audiences. Hashtags (such as #ejuice and #eliquid) are one way to target interested users.
User content can trigger peer effects, increasing consumer interest even without influencer involvement. A 2012 study focused on this communication reported that communication among peers can affect purchase intentions: direct impact through encouraging conformity, and an indirect impact by increasing product engagement. This study claimed that peer communication about a product increased product engagement.
Dounoucos et al. reported that Twitter use by candidates was unprecedented during the US 2016 election. The public increased its reliance on social-media sites for political information. In the European Union, social media amplified political messages. Foreign-originated social-media campaigns attempt to influence political opinion in another country.
Militant groups use social media as an organizing and recruiting tool. Islamic State (also known as ISIS) used social media. In 2014, #AllEyesonISIS went viral on Arabic Twitter.P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking. Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media. Houghton Mifflin, NY, 2018.
Colleges and universities may access applicants' internet services including social media profiles as part of their admissions process. According to Kaplan, Inc, a corporation that provides higher education preparation, in 2012 27% of admissions officers used Google to learn more about an applicant, with 26% checking Facebook. Students whose social media pages include questionable material may be disqualified from admission processes.
"One survey in July 2017, by the American Association of College Registrars and Admissions Officers, reported that 11 percent of respondents said they had refused to admit an applicant based on social media content. This includes 8 percent of public institutions, where the First Amendment applies. The survey reported that 30 percent of institutions acknowledged reviewing the personal social media accounts of applicants at least some of the time."
Courts do not always admit social media evidence, in part, because screenshots can be faked or tampered with. Judges may consider into account to assess statements made on social media; in one Michigan case where a person alleged that another person had defamed them in an online comment, the judge disagreed, noting that an emoji after the comment that indicated that it was a joke. In a 2014 case in Ontario against a police officer regarding alleged assault of a protester during the G20 summit, the court rejected the Crown's application to use a digital photo of the protest that was anonymously posted online, because it included no metadata verifying its provenance.
On April 9, 2024, the Spirit Lake Tribe in North Dakota and Menominee of Wisconsin have sued social media companies (Meta Platforms-Facebook, Instagram; Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, and Google) companies accused of ‘deliberate misconduct’. Their lawsuit describes "a sophisticated and intentional effort that has caused a continuing, substantial, and longterm burden to the Tribe and its members," leaving scarce resources for education, cultural preservation and other social programs. These social media lawsuits are one of several legal actions brought against social media giants. Independently, 33 state attorneys general, including South Dakota's, sued the same defendants for targeting teens with allegedly poor content, they allege. The defendants have said they are launching new safety tools and features to protect younger users.
In Alone Together Sherry Turkle considered how people confuse social media usage with authentic communication. She claimed that people act differently online and are less concerned about hurting others' feelings. Some online encounters can cause stress and anxiety, due to the difficulty purging online posts, fear of getting hacked, or of universities and employers exploring social media pages. Turkle speculated that many people prefer texting to face-to-face communication, which can contribute to loneliness. Surveys from 2019 reported evidence among teens in the United States and Mexico. Some researchers reported that exchanges that involved direct communication and reciprocal messages correlated with less loneliness.
In social media "stalking" or "creeping" refers to looking at someone's "timeline, status updates, tweets, and online bios" to find information about them and their activities. A sub-category of creeping is creeping ex-partners after a breakup.
Catfishing (creating a false identity) allows bad actors to exploit the lonely.
A 2016 study reported that teenage girls manipulate their self-presentation on social media to appear beautiful as viewed by their peers. Teenage girls attempt to earn regard and acceptance (likes, comments, and shares). When this does not go well, self-confidence and self-satisfaction can decline. A 2018 survey of American teens ages 13–17 by Common Sense Media reported that 45% said likes are at least somewhat important, and 26% at least somewhat agreed that they feel bad about themselves if nobody responds to their photos. Some evidence suggests that perceived rejection may lead to emotional pain, and some may resort to online bullying. according to a 2016 study, users' reward circuits in their brains are more active when their photos are liked by more peers.
A 2016 review concluded that social media can trigger a negative feedback loop of viewing and uploading photos, self-comparison, disappointment, and disordered body perception when social success is not achieved. One 2016 study reported that Pinterest is directly associated with disordered dieting behavior.
People portray themselves on social media in the most appealing way. However, upon seeing one person's curated persona, other people may question why their own lives are not as exciting or fulfilling. One 2017 study reported that problematic social media use (i.e., feeling addicted to social media) was related to lower life satisfaction and self-esteem. Studies have reported that social media comparisons can have dire effects on physical and mental health. In one study, women reported that social media was the most influential source of their body image satisfaction; while men reported them as the second biggest factor. While monitoring the lives of celebrities long predates social media, the ease and immediacy of direct comparisons of pictures and stories with one's own may increase their impact.
A 2021 study reported that 87% of women and 65% of men compared themselves to others on social media.
Efforts to combat such negative effects focused promoting body positivity. In a related study, women aged 18–30 were reported posts that contained side-by-side images of women in the same clothes and setting, but one image was enhanced for Instagram, while the other was an unedited, "realistic" version. Women who participated in this experiment reported a decrease in body dissatisfaction.
While social media can provide health information, it typically has no mechanism for ensuring the quality of that information. The National Eating Disorders Association reported a high correlation between weight loss content and disorderly eating among women who have been influenced by inaccurate content. Health literacy offers skills to allow users to spot/avoid such content. Efforts by governments and public health organizations to advance health literacy reportedly achieved limited success. The role of parents and caregivers who proactively approach their children with ongoing guidance and open discussions on the benefits and difficulties they may encounter online, demonstrate some reductions in overall anxiety and depression among adolescents.
Social media such as pro-ana sites reportedly increase risk of harm by reinforcing damaging health-related behaviors through social media, especially among adolescents.
A second emotional effect is social media burnout, defined as ambivalence, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization. Ambivalence is confusion about the benefits from using social media. Emotional exhaustion is stress from using social media. Depersonalization is emotional detachment from social media. The three burnout factors negatively influence the likelihood of continuing on social media.
A third emotional effect is "fear of missing out" (FOMO), which is the "pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent." It is associated with increased scrutiny of friends on social media.
Social media can also offer support as Twitter has done for the medical community. X facilitated academic discussion among health professionals and students, while providing a supportive community for these individuals by and allowing members to support each other through likes, comments, and posts. Access to social media offered a way to keep older adults connected, after the deaths of partners and geographical distance between friends and loved ones. In March 2025, a Pakistani man killed a WhatsApp group admin in anger after being removed from the chat.
Aviv Ovadya argues that these algorithms incentivize the creation of divisive content in addition to promoting existing divisive content, but could be designed to reduce polarization instead. In 2017, Facebook gave its new emoji reactions five times the weight in its algorithms as its like button, which data scientists at the company in 2019 confirmed had disproportionately boosted toxicity, misinformation and low-quality news. Some popular ideas for how to combat selective exposure have had no or opposite impacts. Some advocate for media literacy as a solution. Others argue that less social media, or more local journalism could help address political polarization.
Social media has affected the way youth communicate, by introducing new forms of language.
The hashtag was created to simplify searching for information and to allow users to highlight topics of interest in the hope of attracting the attention of others. Hashtags can be used to advocate for a movement, mark content for future use, and allow other users to contribute to a discussion.
For some young people, social media and texting have largely replaced in person communications, made worse by pandemic isolation, delaying the development of conversation and other social skills.
What is socially acceptable is now heavily based on social media. The American Academy of Pediatrics reported that bullying, the making of non-inclusive friend groups, and sexual experimentation have increased cyberbullying, privacy issues, and sending sexual images or messages. Sexting and revenge porn became rampant, particularly among minors, with legal implications and resulting trauma risk. However, adolescents can learn basic social and technical skills online. Social media, can strengthen relationships just by keeping in touch, making more friends, and engaging in community activities.
In November 2024, the federal government passed the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 introduced by the Albanese government banning people under the age of 16 from using most social media platforms, which would come into effect in late 2025. Presented by Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland, the bill was created as an attempt at reducing social media harms for young people and responding to the concerns of parents. The stated penalty for breach of the new laws on the part of social media platforms was a financial penalty of AU$49.5 million. The ban would apply to many major social media platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, but would exempt platforms deemed to meet educational or health needs of people under 16, including YouTube and Google Classroom. Supporters of the ban included the advocacy group 36 Months and media corporation News Corp Australia which ran a campaign titled Let Them Be Kids, whilst opposers expressed concern that the ban could cause isolation amongst teenagers belonging to marginalised groups such as the LGBTQ community or migrant/culturally diverse backgrounds, and that the ban could stifle creativity and freedom of expression amongst young people.
Violators could face a complete ban in Europe or fines of up to 6% of global sales. Such content moderation requires extensive investment by platform providers. Enforcement resources may not be sufficient to ensure compliance.
The DSA allows a country to require information to be deleted that is illegal only in that jurisdiction. According to Patrick Breyer from the German Pirate Party, a problem could arise from the Hungarian government requesting a video to be deleted that is critical of Victor Orban, as he foresaw the potential for such determinations to be applied EU-wide.
Another proposal is to invoke competition law. The idea is to restrict the platforms' market power by controlling mergers ex ante and tightening the law. This would be achieved through a supranational enforcement mechanism and the deterrent effect of high fines.
In a 2024 opinion piece, Megan Moreno and Jenny Radesky, professors of pediatrics, wrote about the need for "nuanced" policy. They regarded access which is contingent upon parental consent as harmful. They commented that a focus on increasing age restrictions "may serve to distract from making sure platforms are following guidelines and best practices for all ages".
In 2007 Andrew Keen wrote, "Out of this anarchy, it suddenly became clear that what was governing the infinite monkeys now inputting away on the Internet was the law of digital Darwinism, the survival of the loudest and most opinionated. Under these rules, the only way to intellectually prevail is by infinite filibustering."
In 2018, researchers reported that fake news spread almost 70% faster than truthful news on X. Social media bots on social media increase the reach of both true and false content and if wielded by bad actors misinformation can reach many more users. Some platforms attempt to discover and block bots, with limited success. Fake news seems to receive more user engagement, possibly because it is relatively novel, engaging users' curiosity and increasing spread. Fake news often propagates in the immediate aftermath of an event, before conventional media are prepared to publish.
Disputing Gladwell's theory, a 2018 survey reported that people who are politically expressive on social media are more likely to participate in offline political activity.
Although platform's terms differ, generally they all give permission to utilize users' copyrighted works at the platform's discretion.
After its acquisition by Facebook in 2012, Instagram revealed it intended to use content in ads without seeking permission from or paying its users. It then reversed these changes, with then-CEO Kevin Systrom promising to update the terms of service.
Young people are prone to sharing personal information that can attract predators.
While social media users claim to want to keep their data private, their behavior does not reflect that concern, as many users expose significant personal data on their profiles.
In addition, platforms collect data on user behaviors that are not part of their personal profiles. This data is made available to third parties for purposes that include targeted advertising.
A 2014 Pew Research Center survey reported that 91% of Americans "agree" or "strongly agree" that people have lost control over how personal information is collected and used. Some 80% of social media users said they were concerned about advertisers and businesses accessing the data they share on social media platforms, and 64% said the government should do more to regulate advertisers. In 2019, UK legislators criticized Facebook for not protecting certain aspects of user data.
In 2019 the The Pentagon issued guidance to the military, Coast Guard and other government agencies that identified "the potential risk associated with using the TikTok app and directs appropriate action for employees to take in order to safeguard their personal information." As a result, the military, Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration, and Department of Homeland Security banned the installation and use of TikTok on government devices.
In 2020 The US government attempted to ban TikTok and WeChat from the States over national security concerns. However, a federal court blocked the move. In 2024, the US Congress passed a law directing TikTok's parent company ByteDance to divest the service or see the service banned from operating in the US. The company sued, challenging the constitutionality of the ban. The ban was upheld as constitutional.
Various lawsuits have been brought regarding social media addiction, such as the Multi-District Litigation alleging harms caused by social media addiction on young users.
As result, phones have been banned from some schools, and some schools in the US have blocked social media websites.
Intense discussions are taking place regarding the imposition of certain restrictions on children's access to social media. It is argued that using social media at a young age brings with it many problems. For example, according to a survey conducted by Ofcom, the media regulator in the UK, 22% of children aged 8-17 lie about being over 18 on social media. According to a system implemented in Norway, more than half of nine-year-olds and the vast majority of 12-year-olds spend time on social media. A series of measures have begun to be taken across Europe to prevent the risks caused by such problems. The countries that have taken concrete steps in this regard are Norway and France. Since June 2023, France has started requiring social media platforms to verify the ages of their users and to obtain parental consent for those under the age of 15. In Norway, there is a minimum age requirement of 13 to access social media. The Online Safety Law in the UK has given social media platforms until mid-2025 to strengthen their age verification systems.
In December 2019, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey advocated an "open and decentralized standard for social media". He joined Bluesky to bring it to reality.
+Guidelines for users who have died, by platform !Platform !Guideline | |
X | The company works with an immediate family member to deactivate the account. Additionally, X will not give the account to any other person, regardless of the relationship. |
Users have the option of having their account permanently deleted after death. Users can identify a 'legacy contact' who would take over the account after. | |
Users can have the account memorialized or deleted with proof of death. | |
A family member can request that the account be deleted. The family member must identify the account, submit proof of relationship, the user's email address, date of death, a link to the obituary, and the name of the last company the deceased worked for. | |
Must email the company with the URL of the account along with a death certificate or a link to the obituary, as well as proof of relationship to the deceased. | |
YouTube | A representative can close the account, transfer payments from the account to an immediate family member and legal representative of the user's estate, and can provide the data in the account to a family member. All three capabilities require the requestor's government-issued ID or driver's license, the decedent's death certificate, and additional supporting documentation. |
The heir must supply the user's death certificate, authentication of family relationship. The successor can then obtain the assets. |
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